Salesforce is considering purchasing the Slack messaging app: WSJ

• According to a Wednesday report from the Wall Street Journal, Salesforce is considering buying the Slack office chat app.
• The move would signal the cloud giant’s foray into office communications software.
• There are no indications that the preliminary talks will lead to an acquisition, according to the report.
• Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.

According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, Salesforce is considering purchasing the Slack workplace messaging app.

There are no indications that the preliminary talks will lead to an acquisition, according to the report, but a deal would signal the cloud giant’s foray into office communications. It would represent the largest Salesforce acquisition in its history, as Slack’s market cap is $ 17 billion.

Salesforce and Slack weren’t immediately available for comment.

This would continue the great Salesforce acquisition spree. Salesforce has made two large acquisitions in the past few years, data visualization company Tableau for over $ 15 billion in 2019 and MuleSoft for $ 6.5 billion in 2018.

Notably, on the company’s latest quarterly earnings call in August, CEO Marc Benioff said that for a company like his, he doesn’t “really see a M&A environment” right now, suggesting that a other major acquisition is not in the cards. He also said at the time that Salesforce is focusing on integrating its MuleSoft and Tableau acquisitions this year.

However, Salesforce made a few minor acquisitions this year, such as Vlocity for $ 1.3 billion in February and The CMO Club marketing network for an undisclosed amount in early March. Analysts had already speculated that Salesforce would have to make more acquisitions to maintain its rapid pace of growth. In a recent note from UBS, analysts pointed to a “lack of innovation” on Salesforce’s part that could hinder its growth.

Salesforce and Slack have a pre-existing partnership since 2016 and expanded it last year so users can more easily move between the two cloud services.

Both companies compete with Microsoft, Salesforce with Microsoft’s customer relationship management tools, and Slack with Microsoft Teams, its chat and collaboration app. A merger could potentially position both companies as a stronger competitor to Microsoft.

Slack stock was up more than 29% in the report Wednesday, while Salesforce stock was down about 3.5%.